


bite your tongue

by stray_dog_sick



Category: I Don't Know How But They Found Me (Band)
Genre: But only if you squint, First Kiss, Five Stages of Grief, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Break Up, except there's seven parts because i wanted to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 15:58:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18034700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stray_dog_sick/pseuds/stray_dog_sick
Summary: The first stage is numbed disbelief. You may deny the reality of the loss at some level, in order to avoid the pain. Shock provides emotional protection from being overwhelmed all at once.





	bite your tongue

**Author's Note:**

> i dedicate this to the e-girl dallon rights group chat and i regret nothing even though it's 1am
> 
> title from 'choke' by i don't know how but they found me

He sat on the couch, an unopened bottle of beer on the coffee table in front of him. Taunting him. He’d never considered drinking before, but he’d seen Ryan do it, when his friend was upset. And he was beyond upset these days.

(He had no right to be. It was his fault for opening his mouth.  _ I’m sorry, Breezy, I think I have feelings for someone else. _ )

The house was too quiet. The rooms were too big. His thoughts were too loud.

( _ For a guy. _ )

He tried to fill his house with friends - Ryan - and music to cover up the fact he was alone but it didn’t work, nothing ever worked. It was just him and his thoughts and feelings and single bottle of beer that he’d never drink.

She’d come back. She knew he wouldn’t leave her. He just wanted to get it off his chest, tell someone before the thoughts got too much. 

(He couldn’t stop thinking about  _ him,  _ how those hands would feel on his skin and how that face would look in the moonlight. He had to tell her so he didn’t act on them.)

It’d only been a week. She’d come back.

\---

He was the biggest idiot on Earth, and everyone knew it except him. He never should’ve said anything. His feelings didn’t matter anyway, nothing would ever come of it. He loved Breezy. 

(He loved  _ him _ , too. But no one needed to know that, ever. Especially not her.)

Ryan picked up the beer bottle that had been there two weeks and put it in a black bag. The trash had been there two weeks too. He had other things on his mind right now, like her and him and how his life was falling apart. 

He pulled his knees to his chest and cried. It was all he could do these days. His chest and head hurt, from heartbreak and overthinking and hating himself. Ryan moved around him, trying to pick the pieces of his life back together. He couldn’t stop crying long enough to say it was an impossible task.

\---

“We go on tour next week. Will you be okay? We can still cancel.”

Of course, time didn’t stop just because he could no longer tell the days apart. He had a job, a life to get back to that didn’t involve her. 

(She never came back.)

The world didn’t stop for him and his pain and confusion and hatred. The world was unfair, making him let thousands of people down, or stand in front of those thousands and sing words about her as if she was still there. They didn’t have enough songs for a new setlist. He should’ve worked harder when they were in the studio.

“Fuck you.”

Ryan looked shocked. He never swore, never said a cruel word to anyone’s face. He wasn’t a cruel person, just a very lost one. 

“I don’t want to go but you know we can’t cancel. Then the fans would hate me too.”

Ryan sighed. He could hear something about how no one would hate him, how they’d understand, but the roaring in his head drowned it out. He kicked the coffee table, smashed the vase that replaced the bottle, screamed vile thoughts as he wrecked the room.

( _ Fuck this, fuck you! This is your fault! I hate her! I hate you! Just leave me alone! _ )

Eventually he collapsed in the middle of the mess, a nice metaphor for how he was collapsing in this mess he’d made of his life. He cried again. He felt somebody beside him, and those hands that had ruined everything against his skin.

“I will never leave you.”

\---

He played the shows, put on a convincing act so the fans wouldn’t know something was wrong. He told them he was sick again, because he always got sick on tour. They believed him.

He didn’t talk to the opening bands, the crew, anyone except Ryan. And that was only because Ryan never let him out of sight. 

(Ryan thought it was helping, but it only made things worse. Now he had no choice to think about  _ him _ every hour of the day.)

Ryan was all he had left now. He’d lost his wife and his kids, because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, but he hadn’t lost his best friend. Yet. Because he would never tell Ryan the reason why she left.

(He just wanted to tell her that nothing would come of it. He wasn’t into guys, really. He loved her. He just loved  _ him  _ too.)

Some days it felt like all he did offstage was cry, but he didn’t know another way to handle the feelings inside him. Anger, hatred, longing, guilt. Shame. That had started a few days into tour, the shame of what had really happened. His wife left him because he was in love with a man. His grandparents were rolling in their graves.

\---

“You ever gonna tell me what happened?”

He survived tour. He survived another month without her, and went back to his empty house and broken coffee table, to sort her mail from his and return it to sender. He shook his head.

“I think you should, man, I might be good to get it off your chest. I know you haven’t been to your therapist.”

His hands shook too as he put another letter in the return pile. He didn’t know her current address and didn’t really want to guess. This was the first of his ‘new life’ chores, as Ryan called them. Get rid of Breezy’s stuff, replace it with Ryan’s. His best friend needed more space to live in, after all.

(It was getting harder and harder to ignore his thoughts every day that Ryan lived here, but he didn’t have the heart to say no. He’d always been a bit of a coward.)

“I told her I had feelings for someone- for a guy.”

His mouth blurted out the truth before his brain could say no. This was becoming an awful trait of his, really.

He was expecting shock, or perhaps sympathy. Maybe a follow up question. Not an aborted sentence, followed by silence while they sorted more envelopes out. 

(He thought Ryan looked happy, in a twisted kind of way.)

\---

He and Ryan never spent a moment apart anymore, except for moments that were private. Eventually he started to enjoy the company. And those hands were on his shoulders, his back, his hair. 

(That face looked beautiful all the time, not just in the moonlight.)

Weeks turned into months, and he announced his divorce to the world. Not the reason, of course. Not even Ryan knew the full story. But he couldn’t hide it from the fans any longer, they deserved to know what was happening in his life.

(He mostly just wanted them to stop asking about the kids.)

Ryan still lived with him, and he liked it that way. It was easier to pay the bills with two people. It was harder to be lonely with two people, too. 

“You never told me who you had feelings for, y’know.”

Ryan stood opposite him, and he couldn’t find a hint of curiosity on his friend’s face. Ryan was the smartest person he knew. 

“I don’t think I have to.”

Ryan smiled and held his hands. For the first time in months, he think he smiled too.

\---

He signed the papers that would make him a single man again, he hugged his children, and he went back home to Ryan. Dinner was waiting, because Ryan was amazing like that, always had been. He ate and forced himself to stop thinking about how long it would be until he saw them again.

They went back to the studio, and he tried to turn his emotions into words. In some songs he disguised it much better than others, but he knew the most truthful ones needed to be written. 

(The fans had to know who he was. They needed a song about him accepting himself. He almost had a monopoly on alternative LGBT songs now.)

Months turned into an endless cycle of writing, recording, scrapping, keeping the label at bay. Eventually he had enough songs for a record, and the label slapped a release date on it, unknowingly one year since she’d left. He didn’t fight it. He thought it was quite fitting.

Ryan never left his side. His mother would call them two peas in a pod if she was there to see it.

(He personally would call it soulmates if he let himself, but they weren’t at that stage yet.)

One month until release day, and Ryan had him cornered in the kitchen, the room lit up only by the moonlight.

“So, when can I kiss you?”

He swallowed.

“Whenever you like.”

His head was loud, his heart full. Those hands were on his shoulders, and Ryan’s lips were against his own. He thought it tasted slightly like Ryan’s post-meeting celebratory beer. He found that he didn’t care at all.


End file.
